The bigger picture
Why digital infrastructure is the defining investment of our generation
Data centers are the power plants of the 21st century. Without them, the modern American economy simply does not function. Here’s why building more — and building them here — matters to every community in the country.
$7.9T
Global digital economy size by 2030
40%
Of all US business revenue now flows through digital systems
2×
Data demand doubles every two years in the US
35%
Of global data center capacity is located on US soil
The national imperative
America built the internet. Now we must build its home.
For most of the past three decades, the United States led the world in digital innovation because we had the physical infrastructure to support it. Data centers, fiber networks, and computing hardware built in America, owned by American companies, run under American law.
That advantage is not guaranteed. China is building data infrastructure at a historic pace. The European Union is mandating domestic data sovereignty. The window to maintain American leadership is not unlimited.
The AI acceleration
The AI revolution runs on compute. Compute runs on data centers.
Training a single large AI model requires more computing power than most corporations have ever deployed. AI-powered drug discovery, climate modeling, financial analysis, and precision agriculture all require vast, reliable, domestic computing capacity.
Countries that control AI compute control the future. Data centers are the physical embodiment of that compute. They are not optional infrastructure. They are strategic assets.
Who depends on data infrastructure?
01 — Healthcare depends on it
Electronic health records, telemedicine, diagnostic AI, drug discovery, hospital logistics — all powered by data centers. Rural and community hospitals increasingly rely on cloud-based clinical systems that require nearby, reliable infrastructure to reduce latency and ensure uptime during emergencies.
02 — Small businesses need it
92% of US small businesses use cloud-based tools — accounting, payroll, customer management, inventory. They don’t own servers. They rent compute from data centers. Without modern, domestic data infrastructure, small businesses pay more and get less.
03 — National security requires it
The Department of Defense, intelligence agencies, financial regulators, and critical infrastructure operators all depend on data systems that must, by law and by prudence, operate on American soil. A gap in domestic data capacity is a gap in national security.
04 — Our energy grid runs on it
Power grid management, smart utility systems, outage prediction, and demand balancing are all increasingly software-defined. The data centers that run these systems need to be nearby, resilient, and redundant. That means building more of them — across more of the country.
In the 1950s, communities that welcomed the interstate highway got the economy. In the 1990s, communities with broadband got the jobs. Today, communities with data infrastructure get the future.
— America’s Digital Future Initiative